Seoul: North Korea today (June 28, 2004) rejected as "unrealistic" a US proposal put to six-party talks in Beijing to end the 20-month-old nuclear impasse.

The Communist country, through an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman, dismissed a US plan to give North Korea three months to shut down and seal its nuclear weapons facilities.

"The US offer to allow a 'three-month preparatory period' for nuclear dismantlement was so unscientific and unrealistic that nobody could support it," the spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.